How to Get Higher Local Search Engine Rankings in Charlotte…on a Budget

Do you own or run a business here in Charlotte? Then you may have noticed that, over the years, SEO has become more and more complicated. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be more expensive. This is especially true for local SEO in Charlotte. Rather than competing with hundreds or thousands of other businesses across the country, you’re simply competing with those in the area…meaning you have a much better chance of standing out.

So, for instance, if you run a veterinarian practice in Charlotte, NC, then there’s no need to invest extensive resources into rating highly in global searches. You just want to rank first in the search engine – or at least on the first page – when someone searches for “veterinarians in Charlotte.”

But how can you do that without a big marketing budget? With the right local SEO strategy for your Charlotte, NC business, it’s easy to attain higher rankings and gain more visibility – and you don’t have to break the bank in the process. Here’s how:

Focus on incredible content.

You might be well versed in SEO, responsive design, and meta tags. However, at the end of the day, none of this can take the place of powerful, relevant content. Learn how to blog, consider adding photos and videos, as well to your site. Websites that go beyond plain text have higher rankings and lower bounce rates. Just make sure that your website load time isn’t impacted. Google penalizes sites that load slowly; likewise, customers and prospects will click off a clunky site.

Don’t forget to build your citations.

Citations are simply an online reference to your company name, address, phone or website. They can come from anywhere including your Google My Business listing, as well as other directory listings like those on whitepages.com, yellowpages.com, Bing Local, Yahoo!, and Yelp. They can also originate from blog posts or news articles that mention your company or products. But the more quality mentions of your business, the better your local search engine results.

Just make sure that the information in your citations is accurate and consistent across all listings. Google establishes trust and relevancy through consistency. So inaccurate or conflicting contact information can have a negative impact on rankings.

Encourage online reviews.

Online reviews can yield some serious local SEO results in Charlotte – all without you having to lift a finger. In fact, according to a study by Dimensional Research, 90% of those surveyed said that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions. What’s more is that 74% reported that they would drive an additional 20-60 miles to shop somewhere with good reviews.

Add a healthy dose of social media.

High quality content on social media can also have a big impact on local SEO results. Google says they don’t take social media directly into account. However, the search engine does factor in social signals (a measure of social media activity, such as a like, vote, or share) when ranking a site. So make sure you have profiles on relevant social media sites, post high quality content to them, and encourage regular customer interaction.

If your business is a local one – and you rely on nearby customers – then localized SEO is your ticket to more online visibility and website traffic. And with the tips above you don’t need to have a huge marketing budget to attain those goals. But if you’d rather outsource the process to Charlotte’s SEO experts, contact YouthNoise. We specialize in search engine domination and can help you get multiple first page rankings.